


Back into the Labyrinth

by faerywhimsy (persephone20)



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-04
Updated: 2011-09-04
Packaged: 2017-10-23 10:01:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/249089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephone20/pseuds/faerywhimsy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>She'd always wondered what his hair would feel like, and now she knew; sort of silken, yet interwoven with thicker strands that were almost like straw.</i> In which Sarah does not always repel the Goblin King's advances, merely to understand them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Back into the Labyrinth

Jareth, for his part, was not in the habit of falling in love with the young women who fell into his Labyrinth. Just the opposite, in fact. There were rules, however, and Jareth was just as suseptable to rules as anybody else. Without rules, there was only chaos, and chaos was that much harder to control.

In his Labyrinth, the farer had no magic. Jareth had lots of magic. The farer had 13 hours to get to the centre of the Labyrinth. Jareth had 13 hours to stop them. If the farer successfully reached the middle of the Labyrinth, they could reclaim what had been lost to them; if not, it was forfeit.

If the farer successfully reached the middle of the Labyrinth, they would be a fitting match for the Goblin King. And the Goblin King would fall in love.

Nobody had ever reached the middle of the Labyrinth, not until Sarah.

Jareth still thought of her every day. There was, however, just one more rule that had made him unable to pursue her in any way. And that was, if the farer reached the middle of the Labyrinth, the one who had been lost to them would be free to go... and so would they.

She was just been a teenage girl when they first met, no more in control of what she was feeling at any given time than she was in control of her body, or her hormones. Jareth had watched through his crystal ball as she had grown up to become a fine, young woman. He watched her graduate high school, and travel across state to go to college, visiting her father and step-mother some weekends.

He watched her walk of shame from the dorm room of the first college boy she slept with, the first time that she thought she was in love, the first heartbreak when she realised he wasn't.

At each of those times, he'd wanted to reach out to her, to talk to her, to take her in his arms and comfort her. But there were rules, those damned stupid rules.

*

Sarah realised Jareth was still watching her a year after she returned from the Labyrinth. Maybe it started out as wishful thinking at first but, as time went on, Sarah began to notice little things. The image of a tall, blonde haired man in her mirror, out of the corner of her eye. A crystal ball rolling out of the room she was in, gone before she followed it out into the hall. These little remembrances, reminders that she wasn't crazy, brought smiles to her lips over the years.

However, when she made the decision to go across state for college, she made the decision also to leave well enough in the past. Wonderful it was that she wasn't crazy. But there was simply no point in putting her whole life on hold for the memory of a Goblin King who had wormed his way into hear heart when she'd been sixteen.

She didn't even know if he'd really managed to worm his way into her heart. She distinctly remembered telling him that she didn't like him, that he wasn't fair. He'd stolen Toby! All she'd wanted once she was there to get away again, to get Toby away from him. And she had done.

But though she made the decision not to put her life on hold, she didn't stop thinking about Jareth.

In her second year, she decided to take a psych class. If she was honest with herself, she could admit that this was because she was wondering about the theories of projection and memory because, by that time, she'd had several failed romances that had nose-dived before they'd ever had a chance. None of them lived up to the Goblin King of her memories. To be honest, she wasn't sure that the Jareth himself still could have lived up to the Goblin King of her memories.

It wasn't until after the night when her roommate invited her out to a nightclub with her and some friends that Sarah happened to learn a little bit of something new about herself.

"Come on, Sarah," Jenny had whined at her, even as she'd been pulling on thigh high stockings. "You never come out. It'll be fun!"

"I have nothing to wear," Sarah had replied.

"Just wear black."

So Sarah had worn black. All she was wearing was an A-line black skirt, black top and some fishnets over her arms that Jenny lent to her. Along with Jenny's friends, Dee, Audrey and Mike, they had gone along to the club.

It had been like a sort of Underground of its own. Lighting was dim, music was loud. Sarah could hear people talking above the music, but Jenny was signing to say that she was heading off in the direction of some smokers out the back.

Sarah turned in the other direction, thinking to get a drink. While her order was being taken, she happened to look over her shoulder. Behind her, there was a person whose wrists were tied to a chair. Their eyes were closed and a person nearby them was rolling a little wheel of needles over their skin. They were shuddering in delight; the expression on their face gave that away.

Behind that, there was a person strapped to a cross, and another person behind that with a flogger.

"Here's your drink. That's $5.50."

Sarah took the drink with numb fingers. There was a strange feeling going on in the pit of her stomach. A masked man, wearing nothing but a mask and what appeared to be a loincloth, walked past, and Sarah was almost jolted to another time, and Jareth's face appeared to her more than once that night out of the corner of her eye.

Later, after returning from that club, she could not get the images from that place out of her mind's eye.

Jenny was apologetic about it, incorrectly assuming the reason for Sarah being subdued.

"I'm sorry. I guess I should have given you more of a context of the kind of place we were going to. Are you... okay?"

"I'm fine. Really. It was... informative."

*

She started dating someone she first met at the club, thinking that that was what she wanted. She convinced herself that it was what she wanted. With him, there was an aura of danger and attraction both, and Sarah felt drawn to it like a moth to the flame.

She felt drawn also towards skipping classes and sleeping in late as she explored mature yearnings that she'd never understood as a teen.

The feeling she felt at the low mark she recieved at the end of second year was only trumped by the feeling of being broken up with that same week.

"Look... this isn't working out, Sarah..." she was told.

She wanted too much of him, always too much. He didn't know what exactly she wanted, wasn't even sure what he felt for her.

"Do you know what you even want? What you feel?"

She'd thought she was in love with him. This question made her question that.

The start of third year heralded her 21st birthday. Sarah thought herself a veritable adult. Her father, of course, wanted to throw her a birthday party, one week before school went back. There was only one part of it that was a surprise.

She found out about it on the night before the party, when he gave her one of her birthday presents.

"I wanted this to be something special," he told her, as he was handing her the large box. "Something to show you I always paid attention to the things you loved, and still love."

Her father knew her too well. Sarah lifted the lid of the box and, amidst the crepe paper inside, she found a beautiful new version of the dress she had been wearing the day she asked Toby to be taken by the Goblin King.

"Oh, dad..." she said, fingers bunching up the fabric, and tears coming unbidden to her eyes.

"No, no, don't do that!" Her step-mother came to her dresses rescue, taking Sarah's hands and helping her to let go before the fabric crinkled. "Your father has made your 21st birthday a masked ball theme. You don't want to ruin your dress, do you?"

That night, Sarah sat in the bedroom that was still hers whenever she came home for holidays. The box, with dress still in it, was across the room. Sarah couldn't look away from it, couldn't look away from the memories it provoked.

"Jareth..." she breathed. "Was it all a game to you? Was it only ever Toby you were after?"

*

In all these years, she'd never spoken to him directly. Oh, there had been the wry smiles, the stray thoughts, but nothing tangible enough that he could wrangle his way through the Rules and to her side.

He shivered as her voice caressed his name, and he watched. Watched her _very_ carefully. Something crashed and goblins giggled behind him, but Jareth ignored them all.

Her question, freely asked, freed him of the rules that had bound him from her for the last five years. He wasted not one second in coming to her side.

"My dear. You underestimate yourself."

Sarah looked up with startled surprise. Jareth was standing there, standing _right there_ in her bedroom, just inside the open window.

Owl, she thought to herself. But wasn't that the reason why she'd often left her bedroom windows open?

She wet her lips, uncertain of how to navigate now that he was standing here with her. Her eyes drank him up greedily. Now, while he was standing there, while he'd said barely anything, he mind could agree with her memories that had told her all this time that _this_ was what she wanted. _This_ was what she craved so desperately.

For his own part, Jareth gave no indication that he minded such perusal. If anything, his hips jutted out, even as his lithe hands rested upon his hips.

He hadn't aged a day since she'd last seen him, Sarah thought. Her hands moved up to her hair unconsciously. What did she look like to him?

As if reading her mind, Jareth swept across the room, taking those strands of her hair, and brushing his hand against the back of hers quite deliberately. "You look... ravishing," he told her.

Sarah's heartbeat sped. Taking this as an obvious signal to continue, Jareth's eyes watched her very closely as his hand dipped around to her jaw line, lifting her face up to meet his again. Sarah allowed this manipulation of her, having become used to her body being commanded by another during her stint with BDSM. If Jareth was surprised to find her so pliable, he said nothing.

"I have watched you, all these years," he told her, not saying anything she didn't know. But his eyes were sloe, lids heavy, mouth barely moving. It was like he too had fallen under the spell that he'd woven. "You have become just as delictable as I had always imagined. No, Sarah. It is not your brother that I am after. Not at all."

He swept in to kiss her then, taking her lips and ravishing them. Sarah sighed into his mouth, tongue dancing with his, and it is everything she has dreamed for so long.

"Grab me, Sarah. Show me you want this as much as I." His voice is gutteral, full of need for this woman who is now old enough to act on her desires, and his.

With this permission, Sarah lifted herself up from the bed, wrapping her arms around him, threading her fingers through his hair. She'd always wondered what his hair would feel like, and now she knew; sort of silken, yet interwoven with thicker strands that were almost like straw.


End file.
